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Wedding wedding wedding

Wednesday, 06 December, 2006

Another full weekend.

On Friday friends came over to watch Persuasion with me. It's got to be one of the best Austen adaptations—if not the best. The screenplay is just fabulous, the actors are superb and it does well to bring out both the humourous and the repressive aspects of living in such a society. One my friends (the only one who hadn't seen it) was pleasantly surprised.

Saturday saw us getting up bright and early, and driving out to Paddington for a 9:30 rehearsal at St. Matthias, Centennial Park. We rehearsed for close to two hours but those two hours went so quickly—before we knew it, the ladies with the flowers were setting up the church and the male half of the bridal party had arrived. Most of the congregation was on time too—including my mum and Peter who I had not expected to be there at all.

It was a beautiful wedding. Fiona looked lovely (her gown looked like something out of the 1920s). Duncan looked resplendent and his signature sneeze was not heard once during the ceremony. I liked how the bride and groom had chosen particular readings that they read to each other, and how they had worded their vows. Ian Powell preached excellently on Psalm 23 and Philippians 2 (I've never heard a sermon on Psalm 23!) I couldn't help but think of the day I met Duncan outside the UOW chaplaincy, signing up for Mid Year Conference. How cool was it to see him get married now!

We pulled the music together well when the time came to sing each of the songs, and if Brooke Fraser's “Arithmetic” was a little sloppy during the signing of the register, no one seemed to care. I was most relieved when we finished doing “Joy” by the Newsboys and the whole thing was over.

It occurred to me as we went over for morning tea (and then later the exquisite Manor House Hotel for the reception) that in Duncan two parts of my world meet: the Wollongong side and the UNSW side. There were people there from both halves—Matt of course, Greg and Jess (who I hadn't seen in years), Guan and Mary, Haoran and Sarah. It was lovely to catch up with all of them.

After the wedding couple had headed off, Ben and I went home, changed our clothes and drove to Naomi and Simon's for the last Create meeting of the year. There was just us and Bron but it was fun nonetheless. Simon made the last person in the door wear reindeer antlers and a flashing red nose. We ate yummy pizza and watched films from this year's Ignite film festival. Most of them were terrible but I wonder how much that's a product of the submission guidelines and how much it was just bad writing and filmmaking. The guidelines are quite restrictive: the theme for the year was “Fire” which meant that entrants had to find a verse in the Bible that mentioned fire and then make a film based on it that slotted into one of the following themes: Grace, Humility, Justice, Miracles, Sacrifice, Unity and Wisdom. Talk about cramping your creativity! What if the verse I wanted to make a film about had nothing to do with those themes?? Or what if I wanted to make a film about one of those themes but it had nothing to do with a verse on fire? It's a big ask in just five short minutes. I'm not sure if any of our little company could have come up with anything better. (That's the cynic in me talking though.)

Sunday we were up bright and early again for a baptism in Shellharbour for Bec and Phil's little boy. They were coming all the way from Queensland to have it at their home church and so we felt we ought to go because we didn't think we'd get another chance to see them. But we were also quite exhausted from the day before—I wasn't even sure we'd make it at all so didn't RSVP until that morning.

Nevertheless we got into the car and drove to Shellharbour. It was lovely to see little Marcus for the first time in the flesh and to catch up with his parents—even if it was only a short chat. We passed on our apologies about not staying for lunch and then drove back to Sydney again.

We had lunch in Hurstville (BBQ pork with noodles!) and then went to Ben's grandma's place to pick up some things. I knew that that was going to be rather difficult and sad, and I wanted us to be able to go home and rest for a bit after before church. The flat was mostly cleared out but I had been promised her blue and white crockery plus a side table so we loaded those things into the car, as well as some other bits and pieces. Then we drove home and relaxed for an hour or so, watching Veronica Mars before it was time for band practice.

The Tongan congregatoin were still in the building having a congregational meeting. Despite apologising and promising that they would be out in 10 minutes, they didn't actually finish up until 5:40 which was a problem because our service begins at 6:15. Then when we finally got to rehearse, the sound system kept stuffing up (and it kept doing so during the service). We got through it all (despite my glaringly obvious mistake at the beginning of “Meekness and Majesty”). And instead of dinner in the hall, we had finger food in the church building. We left at around 9:00 pm, and went home and crashed.

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